Yandex Social Search App Blocked from Accessing Facebook Data

Josh Constine of Tech Crunch reports, “Yandex begged Facebook not to shut down its social search app Wonder that launched [last week].”

Josh Constine of Tech Crunch reports, “Yandex begged Facebook not to shut down its social search app Wonder that launched [last week]. But the explanation Yandex’s lawyers sent us for why it’s compliant with Facebook’s policies didn’t stop Facebook from blocking all API calls from Wonder, Yandex confirms. Facebook tells me it’s now discussing policy with Yandex. The move follows a trend of Facebook aggressively protecting its data. Wonder has, or should I say had, big potential. When I broke the news that Yandex was readying Wonder earlier this month, I detailed how the voice-activated social search app for iOS let people see what local businesses friends had visited or taken photos at, what music they’d been listening to, and what news they had been reading. It essentially reorganized Facebook’s data into a much more mobile, discoverable format.”

He continues, “Unfortunately, Facebook’s Platform Policy says ‘You must not include data obtained from us in any search engine or directory without our written permission.’ Facebook would not confirm that it has blocked Wonder, though Yandex tells me it received an email from Facebook that its data access had been revoked. Wonder is still able to access Twitter, Foursquare, and interestingly, Instagram data. However, any Wonder user who tries to log in through Facebook is getting this error [above].”